Award Data

The Army needs smaller and cheaper precision weapon systems. Semi-Active Laser guidance (SAL), invented in the 1960’s at the Army Missile command, is a powerful approach to smart weapons. In the past, SAL seekers used quadrant detectors, narrow field-of-view optics, gimbals, and actuators. While very effective, they are expensive. Several programs are desperate for a low-cost solution. One drivi ...

Significant challenges exist related to smartly interviewing multiple people to assess eyewitness accounts and judge how truthful a source is. Aetion proposes applying a powerful form of inference called abduction to help intelligently interview multiple people and compare their corresponding answers to judge the reliability of a source. Abductive inference, or "inference to best explanation," has ...

Developing a robust and accurate test for the detection of malaria continues to be an elusive challenge.1,2 The objective of this proposal is to develop an innovative approach to the diagnosis of malaria that is very specific and sensitive for detecting the presence of malaria parasites in red blood cells (RBC). This approach could potentially be more effective than the current microscopic and r ...

In this SBIR project, a preliminary design of a highly accurate, highly repeatable impulse thruster will be completed. ASI, together with ATK, proposes to complete the preliminary design in parallel with the development of a comprehensive thruster model in a Monte Carlo environment that will account for every contributor to repeatability in the final product. Using modern uncertainty analysis te ...

Gun barrel bores have been traditionally plated with chromium to reduce erosion and increase service life. However, the chrome electro deposition process generates hazardous waste and the DoD has been moving to eliminating its use. Liners made from Tantalum – tungsten (Ta-W) alloys have been shown to be an acceptable substitute. These alloys have a high melting temperature, are more eros ...

U.S. Army helicopter fatigue sensitive dynamic components are required to maintain structural integrity throughout their operational life cycle. Typical metal alloy fatigue sensitive dynamic components require the presence of surface compressive residual stresses to inhibit the initiation and propagation of fatigue cracks. However, some of these components are susceptible to localized mechanical ...

Energetic ionic liquids (EIL) represent a new, and potentially revolutionary development in propulsion chemistry. These salts, with unique attributes of surface tension, vapor pressure, thermal stability, and reactivity are leading candidates for low-toxicity, reduced hazard replacements of conventional (hydrazine based) monopropellants. C3 Propulsion, in collaboration with the Center for Green Ma ...

High fidelity computational analyses using solid-fluid interaction models are becoming an important aspect of rotorcraft analysis and design. The large size of these models (potentially millions of degrees of freedom) makes parallelization necessary for reasonable turn-around times. The fluid models, typically having significantly more degrees of freedom, scale well. The solid models, however, t ...

Emerging drug resistance in infectious threats poses a health risk for deployed forces. The primary objective of the Phase I effort was to enable the development of a sustainable drug discovery effort to continually generate lead compounds for discovery and derivative synthesis. Successful completion of Phase I demonstrated the utilization of a novel source of lead compounds, validation of two hi ...

US software is constantly being attacked by enemies in attempts to reverse engineer the software to extract useful information, military secrets, and intellectual property. This SBIR proposes a solution to this problem: multiple software guards and a secure, efficient communication channel for the exchange of attack information. Six aspects of our proposed solution are especially unique: 1) multip ...